QUEENS, NY — Juan Soto did not talk about winning just one World Series with the New York Mets — what would quench a 39-year championship drought — during his introductory press conference at Citi Field on Thursday.
Instead, he used the word “dynasty” on multiple occasions, which sets goals as lofty as his historic 15-year, $765 million contract that he inked with the Queens club on Sunday night.
“The Mets are a great organization, and what they’ve done in the past couple of years, showing the ability to keep winning, to keep growing a team, to try to grow a dynasty, it was one of the most important things to me,” Soto said when discussing his decision to choose the Mets above the rest of the field, which included the crosstown Yankees. “What I was seeing from the other side was unbelievable. The past and the future this team has, it went a lot into my decision.”
Besides the money, which is the richest contract in sports history and likely did most of the leg work, Soto was wooed by a strong pitch from the Mets that included dinner at owner Steve Cohen’s house and a long-term vision that promised sustainability, a look into how the roster would be built in the future, and a developing pipeline of young talent that will ensure there is no drop-off in the organization’s World Series hopes.
With all that, the Mets still did not know where they stood among the finalists — the Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, and Los Angeles Dodgers — in the final hours of Soto’s sweepstakes. In fact, president of baseball operations David Stearns thought his team’s chances were “under 50%” as recently as Saturday night.
“We were pursuing someone who’s on track to go to Cooperstown, who has done things at an age that maybe no one, maybe one or two others in the history of baseball, has ever done,” Stearns said. “We had a legitimate shot to bring him into our organization. I mean, we all went into this full forward. We need to make the best show of this that we can both financially, from a baseball standpoint, and from an organizational standpoint. There was complete alignment.”
But Soto saw what he needed to see from the Mets, opting to spurn a Yankees team he helped lead to an American League pennant just two months ago.
“They showed me how the organization runs things and how they’re going to manage things, and how they look at their future,” Soto said. “It was one of the things that opened my eyes a little bit more — what they’ve been constructing and building to take all the way… how hungry they are to win a championship and to want to make a dynasty in New York.”
There’s that dynasty word again.
Normally an afterthought within the scope of Major League Baseball, especially when the Yankees constantly overshadowed them, the Mets are now firmly in the spotlight as a legitimate World Series contender for at least the next five years, with Soto likely to bat behind Francisco Lindor atop the lineup.
It is just further confirmation of how far the Mets have come since Cohen took over the club from the Wilpon family.
“It’s a huge move. It just puts an accent on what we’re trying to do,” Cohen said. “This accelerates our goal of winning a championship… My goal was to change how the Mets were viewed. I think we’re really on the path of changing that. We’re never going to stop. We’re always in a constant state of improvement, and that’s my goal. My goal is that the Mets are going to be a premier, elite team in Major League Baseball.”
A huge step was taken during the 2024 season, which was supposed to be a gap year of sorts while Stearns took over the front office and settled in.
Instead, the Mets made a surprising, ahead-of-schedule run to the NLCS, found their manager of the future in Carlos Mendoza, and have only gotten better in the months since.
Perhaps dynasty was the perfect word to use. At least, that is what Mendoza thinks.
“It doesn’t surprise me [that he said dynasty] because that’s what we want to build here,” Mendoza said. “Not only a first-class organization, but a dynasty. He said it, and you know, when you’re adding a player like Juan Soto, those are the expectations and you should have to embrace those expectations because it’s real now. That’s what you want. We’re the New York Mets, we’re in one of the greatest cities in the world, and we’re going after championships.”
